While we're at it, my cover letter probably needs some work too. This one is aimed at a particular company, but I'll probably use it as a starting point for other letters.

Quote:

I am a (soon to be) PhD particle physicist looking to start a career in statistics and data analysis. I’m writing to learn more about opportunities at <company>.

While I’m getting a PhD in physics, the vast majority of the work for my thesis was doing applied statistics and data analysis. I analyzed data from the <big experiment>, searching for new subatomic particles and measuring the properties of the particles we’ve already discovered. Now, I’d like to apply my skills to something with a more immediate impact on the world.

I’ve attached my resume. Several of the positions listed on your website seem like they might be good fits, such as the Research and Data Analyst positions. I’m hoping we can discuss which might be a better fit, or if there are any other open positions I might find interesting.

In closing, I’d like to highlight one item on my resume which might differentiate me from other PhD scientists. My graduate research has been done in the context of the <experiment> collaboration, which is a <big number> person international collaboration centered around a particle detector. Working with such a large and diverse group of people, I have gained a lot of experience working in both small and large groups. I have given numerous technical talks within the collaboration. This research environment has helped me to develop the skills necessary to thrive when collaborating with other people.

No. I don't particularly care for the layout, but am waiting to respond until I'm not constrained by touch typing on a phone. Non-chronological resumes are hard to pull off, and I don't know if that is the best approach here.

- Please remove the objective. Everybody's objective is to get a job. You already cover that with the cover letter/e-mail.

- Is there any university or non-university work or paid/unpaid internship work that you've done prior to your graduate fellowship?

- Watch the bolding. It's a good tactic on occasion, but be mindful not to use it too much. Typically when you feel like you might want to highlight something in the middle of a block of text, you might be better served thinking about whether you can break the block of text down further.

- "Supervised" -- the bolding is wrong and probably should be unbolded and presented as a separate bullet point.

- I hesitate to suggest soft qualifiers in a resume. "Working knowledge of R" -- what does working knowledge *mean* to the reader? Probably not the same thing that you think you're conveying. Likewise, what does "quick learner" mean? Collaboration is something you show in your work history, etc.

Most of it's pretty good-- but just needs a few tweaks.

The cover letter is fine, but it's the generic jumping-off point to use for more serious contacts. You'll need to address the job in question and how you think you would fit. You might need to talk about how you're ready to face non-academic-institution work, or possibly the opposite if you end up in a lab-like environment.

You also don't really want to suggest that you're open to any job-- certainly you can discuss other options once you've made contact with them, but it sounds desperate/an option for a hiring manager to get you cheaply and put you into a lower-tier position. (Also, it's not work that YOU find interesting. It's work that's mutually beneficial-- interesting to you and important for the hiring organization.)

What you have now for the cover letter is just a shotgun approach, which is better than not submitting *anything*. I'd work on tweaking it per-employer and removing the part about "also applying to anything else interesting."